


Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Brighter Day

by decrescendo



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Good Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Parental Jim "Chief" Hopper, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-28 05:04:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18749578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decrescendo/pseuds/decrescendo
Summary: "Nightmare. That can be your word of the day, yeah?"El isn't willing to open up to Hopper, not yet. But he'll be ready when she is.





	Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Brighter Day

Somehow Hooper knew that El was watching him, without having even opened his eyes. He couldn’t hear her, but he thought he could somehow feel her presence in the room. He wondered, not for the first time, if that was part of her powers—if there was some kind of palpable electric charge surrounding her—or if he was just paranoid enough to sense the slightest disturbance in the room.

He kept his eyes closed while he thought about what to do, feigning sleep. It must have been the middle of the night still; all was deadly quiet and he could see no light through his eyelids. Surely he had to do something, acknowledge her instead of pretending not to know. But he was afraid of scaring her away.

He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her slowly, deliberately, so that she would not be startled. “Hey,” he said quietly, voice rough with sleep. “What are you doing up, kid?”

He fully expected that she would run off. She’d done that a few times over the weeks she’d been with him—disappeared suddenly to her room when he tried to ask her anything too personal. But maybe he had finally managed to do something right, because instead she just stood there, perfectly still. In the darkness he could just make out her expression. She was staring at him wide-eyed and unblinking and, if he wasn’t wrong, she looked very, very afraid.

He propped himself up on one arm, biting back a groan at the way his muscles and joints protested. He really was getting old. “Is something wrong?”

After a long pause, she shook her head.

“Okay,” he said, and then went ahead and sat all the way up, pushing aside the quilt and spinning his legs around so his feet rested on the floor. “Just couldn’t sleep?” He said it lightly, as if there was nothing unusual in her behavior, as if she stood and watched him in the middle of the night all the time. Maybe she did, he realized. Maybe this was just the first time he’d woken up to see her there.

She hesitated again before nodding.

“Okay. I’m going to turn the light on, is that okay?” He waited for her to nod before reaching over and flicking on the lamp. She flinched a little in the sudden brightness and he realized that she was trembling violently, arms crossed tightly over her chest as if they were all that was holding her together. Something deep in his chest ached and he ducked his head briefly, pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked back up at her she was still staring at him. Her big brown eyes looked devastated and hopeful and embarrassed and trusting all at once. He opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, changed his mind, closed it again. She wasn’t likely to tell him anything if he asked outright. And he had a pretty good idea of what was going on without her having to say anything.

So he stood up slowly, still working hard not to startle her with any sudden movement. “How about some hot chocolate?” he asked, trying to inject a casualness into his voice that he didn’t quite feel.

She didn’t answer, but she did, after a moment, follow him to the kitchen. She sat down at the table and watched him silently as he poured milk into a saucepan and turned on the stove. He hummed softly as he stirred and swayed a little in time with the tune, and snapped with his free hand, remembering how his dancing had startled a smile from her on their very first day. But now her expression did not change. When he glanced over at her, she was still just _looking_ at him with those wide, solemn eyes.

When the hot chocolate was done he poured it into the blue mug— _her_ blue mug—and set it down on the table. He sat down across from her. “You know,” he said quietly, after she had taken a few hesitant sips, “I had to go fight in a war once.”

She seemed to have relaxed a little bit, clutching the warm mug in her hands, and he registered a wary interest in her face.

“I fought in Vietnam—do you know where that is?” She shook her head. “It’s a country very far from here, in a place called Asia. It’s hot there, and humid, and…there’s a lot of trees.” He drummed his fingers on the table, choosing his words carefully. “They gave me a gun and made me shoot at people. And sometimes people shot at me, too.”

El looked startled by this. “Bad men?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” said Hopper. “Bad men. And it was—it was scary, sometimes, because I was far away from home, and I didn’t know if I would ever get to come back. And now, even though I’m home now and it’s been over for a long time, I still get scared sometimes.”

She blinked at him.

“Sometimes I think I see things from Vietnam even though they aren’t really here. And sometimes I have nightmares about being back there.”

“Night-nightmares?”

“Yeah. Bad dreams. Scary dreams.” He smiled a little, to put her at ease. “That can be your word of the day, yeah?”

She nodded, but still looked troubled.

He sighed and leaned forward, ducking his head down a bit so that their eyes were level. “My point is,” he said quietly, “it’s normal to still be afraid or upset even after…after the scary thing is over. Like how I’m still scared of Vietnam. Yeah?”

She nodded again.

“And I want to make sure that you know it’s okay to ask for help if you feel like that.”

There were tears in her eyes, he realized, but none had fallen. “Help how?” she asked.

“How can someone help if you have nightmares?” She didn’t answer, but he took that as a confirmation. “Well, sometimes talking about it after you wake up helps.”

“Why?”

Hopper shrugged and drummed his fingers lightly on the table. He wasn’t sure, if he was being honest; this wasn’t advice he’d ever taken. He almost never had nightmares about Vietnam, really. All his bad dreams featured Sara, and since Sara’s death, there had been no one in his life he could turn to for comfort. “It helps you realize that it’s not real anymore,” he guessed, trying to sound more certain than he actually was. “And it makes you feel less alone.”

“Do you…feel alone?” asked El.

And Hopper felt gut-punched by the question. There it was again, her almost terrifying ability to see right to the heart of him, to say the deepest and most difficult things without seeming to realize it. “Sometimes,” he admitted quietly. She seemed genuinely grieved by his admission, a concerned crease appearing between her eyebrows, and he felt his heart twist with guilt, or maybe affection. He reached across the table and put his hand lightly on top of hers. “Less now, though. I’ve got you to keep me company, now, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, a bit tearfully. Her gaze was earnest, open, and he found suddenly he couldn’t look at her any longer without risking tearing up himself.

So he took his hand away and glanced toward the window, where a pale light was starting to come in around the edges of the curtains. “Come on,” he said, on a sudden inspiration, “grab your coat and a blanket.”

“Why?” she asked.

“It's too late to go back to bed now," he told her, "so we’re gonna sit outside and watch the sun come up."

She smiled and went to get her coat.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Jim Croce song of the same name.


End file.
